Sundays in the French countryside are dead zones. You may find a bakery or a convenience store open, maybe even a cafe, but by noon everything is shut down and people are home enjoying time with family and friends. Or sleeping. Or otherwise hiding from life because small French towns on Sunday afternoons are buzzing with silence.
Beth and I hung out at the gite Sunday morning drinking coffee, working, blogging and reading. We ate a hearty breakfast of fried potatoes, farmers cheese and over easy eggs. And we spent lots of time figuring out how to make the f^&*%$ washing machine work.
After about three hours we had a load of clothes through a spin cycle and were trying to read the French dial hieroglyphics on how to get the dryer part of the washer/dryer (in France they are often combined units to save space) to work only to discover that our washer/dryer was really only a washer. Merde. So we set up a rack and put our clothes out to dry in the kitchen. Because it was raining. Again. For the fifth day in a row. Getting pretty old if I don’t say so myself…
Around that time Dominique came back from his bike ride. He had been gone three hours and rode 60 km– about 37 miles. 37 miles? Not that tough. But 37 miles at 65 years old in this country? I was thoroughly impressed because it is hilly here. Really hilly. And I told him so, adding I’m not sure I would have made it! He laughed at me and told me I was young and that I would get used to it, and that he had had the same concerns when he moved here from Paris. Then he promised to show me all of his “easier” routes and to get me set up with his bike club in Felletin. Yay! He is really a nice man, soft-spoken and sincere, and I’m looking forward to getting to know him better.
So we definitely got off to a late start and didn’t wind up going on the long walk we had planned. Instead we went for a 50 minute ride to Treignac, which was supposed to be a beautiful city on the Vezzere, but really wasn’t. Beth liked it a lot more than I did. BUT, because it was Sunday, it was raining, and there was absolutely nothing open except for an incredibly bizarre contemporary art exhibit about mutation, it was a ghost town. And I suppose that had something to do with it. But still… MEH.
Drove home after a quick visit, took showers, sulked over our still soaking wet clothes and set off to Faux la Montagne to have dinner with Antonia and Thierry.
I met Antonia in March when I came to Feniers to check out the house. She is a park planner of sorts for the Plateau de Millevaches but also has an Airbnb in her home. It’s a nice, semi-detached suite; spacious and comfortable that, as she said, she rents less for the money and more to meet people.
We were told to arrive sometime between 7:30 and 8:00 and got there closer to 8:00. We nibbled on bread and cheese and olives and drank white wine. Talked about everything under the sun– mostly in French, but Antonia and I tried to keep Beth looped in on the English. Antonia even kept a French-English dictionary by her side. Thierry speaks very little English and Antonia speaks some, but it wasn’t easy for Beth and I think she is understanding now that we are in “deep” France. Still, she understands the gist of most conversations and is even more motivated to learn French. She will be fine.
The 20 minute drive home at 11:30 pm was a true adventure– and I have never seen so many animals on a road. We nearly hit two baby deer. Huge jackrabbits were exploding from the brushy shoulders all over the place, and we think we even saw a sly old fox slip into the bushes as we rounded a corner. It was nuts!
Anyhow, it was a fun day.
Today we head back to Uzzel to see if we can start the process of setting up a bank account and buying insurance for the house. We are also going to stop by La Mairie to visit the mayor of Feniers and introduce ourselves. In France the mayor has control over lots of “stuff” like if you will be allowed to have an Airbnb. And in a small town like Feniers she can be a big help when trying to get services set up, paperwork complete, etc.
What’s really cool about this, though, is we discovered last night, as we were leaving, that Thierry is the mayor of a nearby town and that he and our mayor, Natalie Peyrat, are good friends. Phew! That should help.
Slowly but surely we are getting ourselves set up here.
A demain.
Hotel Féniers 
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